


The Minute You Stop, You're Nothing Again

by Tenukii



Series: We're Going to Talk about Judy [3]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, R. Crumb, The Secret History of Twin Peaks - Mark Frost, The Stand - Stephen King, Twin Peaks
Genre: Books, Deleted Scenes, Gen, Reading, exploring the Bookhouse Boys' favorite books, no basis for a system of government, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 05:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16866823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenukii/pseuds/Tenukii
Summary: Sheriff Truman saw something in Glastonbury Grove.





	The Minute You Stop, You're Nothing Again

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a deleted scene from the original script for episode 29.

In the first days after Agent Cooper disappeared for good, Sheriff Harry Truman distracted himself however he could.  At first in work—and there was plenty of that with all the deaths and disappearances and bombs and rapes.  Harry sometimes considered that Laura Palmer had held the town together with her slender hands, and at her death, Twin Peaks fell apart.

When the work wasn’t enough, there was alcohol.  That didn’t last long, though.  It reminded him too much of Coop, of falling into his arms when there was no comfort anywhere else.

After that, when the work slowed down because the open cases had been closed or had fallen cold, Harry only had one escape left.  He started hiding out at the Bookhouse after work and reading.

He did not reread _To Kill a Mockingbird._   He didn’t think he could find any comfort there, not this time.

Harry sped through _Charlotte’s Web_ , which he hadn’t read since he was a kid.  When Charlotte died, he broke down sobbing and shoved the book back on the shelf, unfinished.

Then he read _The Stand_.  All of it.  The Bookhouse only had a copy because it was Lucy’s favorite, and Lucy had bought all their books.  Harry had always avoided it—if asked why, he would say that Stephen King wasn’t his style, and people would nod in tacit agreement that King wrote trash, and they knew the book was there just because of Lucy.  Really, though, _The Stand_ just looked too long and intimidating to tackle.

But now Harry read it all, at first marveling that Lucy loved that intent and intelligent novel so well.  A guilty feeling nagged at him for a while, and he wondered just how badly he had underestimated Lucy Moran.  Then Harry forgot her in the depths of the story, and the guilt faded away.

 _There was a dark hilarity in his face,_ King wrote of Randall Flagg, _and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think—and you would be right.  It was the face of a hatefully happy man._   Every word about Flagg chilled Harry further.  An ageless man in a denim jacket.  The dark man who just _became_.

Harry knew Randall Flagg.  Cooper had _seen_ him, all the evil that men do, and Harry feared for Coop’s soul.  He read _The Stand_ ravenously over a few days, hurrying toward the end to learn how Flagg fell, _if_ he fell.  When Harry got there, King let him down: no hand of God would ever appear to annihilate BOB.  Things like that didn’t happen in the real world.

Harry closed the book after he’d finished the rest of it, and he shoved it back into its spot on the shelf.  He remembered Lucy, felt guilt all over again, and wondered what had drawn her to the novel.  Maybe she had recognized something about Flagg too.  Maybe she, like Harry, dreamed of being the one to shoot down the dark man and end his reign.

 ** _That_** _’ll happen before the hand of God shit,_ Harry thought.

He looked at one of Cappy’s R. Crumb sketchbooks.  The top of one page advised, _So keep drawing, Daddy-O. . . ‘cause the minute you stop, you’re nothing again!_   Then at the bottom: _I feel awful.  Why am I still alive?_

“‘The minute you stop, you’re nothing again,’” Harry muttered to himself.  “What about when there’s nothing left to draw?  What then?”

_Why am I still alive?_

He gave up on the exalted Favorite Books shelf and went deeper.  He hadn’t looked at most of the shelves in years, and neither had anyone else, judging from the dust.  Harry trailed a finger along the spines as he read the titles, but his fingertip stopped under one: _Le Morte Darthur_.

It gave him a start, and after a second, he realized why: _Of course, Glastonbury Grove, and King Arthur._   Harry pulled out the book and flipped through the pages.  An illustration caught his eye, he paused, and then he stared as fear prickled over his face and down his neck.  In the painting, a pale woman with long, dark hair stood looking back at Arthur, who held the sword she had given him.

 _The Lady of the Lake,_ Harry thought.  He slammed the book closed and returned it to the shelf.  Until then, he had forgotten about the dream, but that woman—she brought it all back.

\--

It happened after Andy had offered to get Harry some dinner, and Harry refused.  Andy had left him there, sitting on a boulder and staring at the circle of sycamores as if he could bring Cooper back through willpower alone.

Later, Harry reasoned that he’d dozed off and dreamed it.  At the time, though, he was sure he was awake when the air in the center of the trees began to shimmy—kind of like how it did over hot pavement, only the mirage here looked far more real and solid than the wavy apparitions of water on the highway.  Harry got to his feet and edged toward the sycamores.

The air itself had darkened within the circle, and now amidst the blackness, a shield appeared.  It shone impossibly white in the dim woods, yet it neither gave off nor reflected light.  Harry froze and stared.  While he watched, a slender sword materialized from the darkness.  Both white shield and silver sword gleamed and dazzled Harry’s eyes until he noticed something else: a pale hand emerging from behind the shield.  It was this hand that wielded the sword.  Harry squinted at the hand, which seemed slender and graceful. . . except something was disturbingly _off_ about it.  As it grasped the sword’s hilt, the hand’s thumb rested below the other fingers, instead of above.

The black air shimmied again as from within it, the bearer of the sword and shield emerged.  She was a woman, tall and dressed in silver chainmail which caught whatever invisible light source illuminated her weapons.  Harry could not see her face within the chainmail hood; the darkness seemed to cling to and conceal it.  Yet the rest of her was pale, not only the hand holding the sword but also her bare arms up to where her glittering sleeves began, and her thighs emerging from where the mail ended, just below her groin.  Harry could not see her feet as they were submerged in the oily black puddle at the center of the grove.

 _No, she’s not just pale,_ Harry decided as his eyes moved over her.  _She’s colorless.  White like the shield and silver like the sword and black like the air—but really, she’s no color at all._

Then the woman turned her obscured face toward him, swiftly like an animal that has spotted its prey.  She lifted her pale arm with its strange backwards hand and held the sword out as if offering it to Harry.  He glanced at the weapon then back to her, wondering, _Does she mean for me to take it up and follow him?  But it’s not my sword—Coop’s the one on this quest, not me.  I wouldn’t be strong enough to lift it, even._

Harry heard a noise, low and mechanical like rusty gears turning.  Once he understood that the noise was coming from the woman, he heard it for what it was—her laughter.

_You failed.  You’ve rejected the chance to save him, just like you lost the chance to save Josie.  And Leland.  And Laura.  You failed all of them._

He imagined he heard all those words in her throaty laughter, but the voice that whispered them in his head was his own.

Now the darkness was finally clearing from her face, and Harry could see her laughing mouth.  His breath caught in his throat so fast, he almost choked on it.

Her face was as pale as the rest of her, but her mouth was huge and dark inside like a black hole that could swallow the whole world and never be filled.  Something sharp flicked in and out of it—her tongue?—and Harry looked away from it, up into the rest of her face.

Except she had no face, nothing but blank, eyeless flesh within her chainmail hood.

“Oh my God,” Harry whispered.  “Oh my God.”

She stopped laughing and seemed to look at him again, even without any eyes.  Her open, laughing mouth changed to form a threatening “O” shape, and Harry felt certain she intended to rush at him with the sword and strike him down for his weakness.

He heard a harsh click, like the pop of a circuit breaker tripping, or a record player’s needle hitting the label.  The eyeless, colorless nightmare vanished, and by the time Harry stepped backwards with numb feet and sat back down on his boulder, he had forgotten her.

\--

In the Bookhouse, weeks later, Harry put his hand to his face and rubbed his eyes.  Of course he had dreamed it all.  He’d been exhausted, dozed off without knowing it, dreamed some crazy nightmare compounded of the name Glastonbury, his worries for Coop, his helplessness to stop the evil that men do.

 _And here I am, still worried and helpless._   Harry turned away from the shelves and walked over to the small bed where Coop had brought Audrey Horne after rescuing her from One Eyed Jack’s—and where Harry himself had slept off the drunken tirade that had ended in Coop’s arms.  Harry sank down to sit on the bed and thought about him: Cooper the white knight, always rushing in to rescue those who needed to be saved.  Cooper the once and future king, gone off to seek the Lady of the Lake.

Harry remembered the rusty laugh and the gaping mouth, and thought, _God help him if he finds her._   Knowing Coop as he did, Harry realized a distinct possibility existed that he _would_ find her.  God help Cooper?  God help them _all_.

 _No more distractions.  I have to think about this.  We have to be ready,_ Harry told himself.  He forced himself to his feet and trudged to the door.  Before going out, Harry glanced around the Bookhouse to make certain everything was secure, all the books back where they belonged and the bed showing no signs anyone had ever slept there.  Then he shut and locked the door behind him.

As he walked to the squad car, Sheriff Truman straightened his hat over his eyes and muttered, “Keep drawing, Daddy-O.”

\--

The End


End file.
